Why is Skydrive in Windows 8 so terrible?

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MrCrispy

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There's no way to manually force a sync, stop sync or even view status. You can't even pause it.

When there's something wrong, the only indication is that stupid yellow triangle. No message box, nothing.

If there's a problem, the entire sync stops and will never resume. Any sane process would continue to try and sync other folders. Since there's no user notification, your local/online files can get hopelessly out of sync.

When you right click, 'view problems' on the yellow triangle, you are dumped into the Metro Skydrive app with no option to stop/restart sync, just a 'browse to item' for the file which failed to sync, which may or may not exist!

I had a few files which caused a sync problem due to path>255 limit, and there was no way to fix it. Skydrive went into an endless loop where it would rename the synced folder with a random number as it endlessly tried to resolve the conflict, so the path it complained about was never actually present. Since there's no UI to stop sync, the only way was to kill 'skydrive.exe'. Now I'll have to delete and recreate the entire folder and manually manage conflicts.

It boggles the mind how after having decades of experience writing file systems, releasing FolderSync, Live Mesh etc, MS could make a product so bad. Windows forums are filled with similar complaints with no response or resolution. I manage 25GB of heavily modified data in Dropbox and never had a single issue.
 
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It also not possible to view shared folders through windows 8 desktop, only through the web client. It was possible in windows 7 but not in the newer, better OS?
 
Yes I'm not too crazy about how they are trying to strip away the desktop functionality of it. You are required to sign in with an MS account in order to use one drive on 8.1. (In 8.1 I think you'll get the OneDrive folder back in your user account if you are signed in using a Microsoft login.) Thankfully someone has figured out a really cool way to get around that and make it very useful.

If you login to the webpage you can get the URL to show your ID. Take that ID and put it at the end of a string and point it at one of their servers. It's fairly easy to map a network drive directly to your One drive account and use it exactly like a network drive. Probably the best find for someone wanting to make use of it.

http://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/09/access-skydrive-windows-8-1-using-local-accounts/
 
Everything you mentioned was why I don't use sky drive anymore as a backup solution. The only thing u use it for how us for syncing my settings. I'll stick with mozy or google drive for my files.
 
Never had an issue with one drive, use every day for the past year or so to sync files across my desktop and 2 laptops.
 
I've used it on 7 and 8 and not had major problems. Occasionally if I were working on a Word document and saved often, eventually sync issues would happen and duplicates would get created because the system didn't know what version to use. Otherwise, it's been super helpful with saving to the Cloud and being able to upload and editing documents off-site then coming back home and getting them locally.

My primary issue is OneDrive on 8.1 and how it requires a Microsoft account to log into the computer. I recently upgraded to 8 but decided to just stay with 8.0 because it properly supports OneDrive by not forcing a Microsoft Connected account to sign into your computer.
 
Windows 8 is all about taking back all the usability and information that was developed until Windows 7.
Anything under metro, from IE to Skype to user settings etc.... everything is massively toned down versions of their desktop counter parts. Bigger buttons, more menus that do less stuff. It feels like that big ass remote controller for old people which has 9 number buttons, volume and power on it only.

So since Windows 8 is terrible, anything which is primarily designed for it terrible as well. This includes skydrive.
 
I use one drive for business and don't have a single complaint about it
 
I don't have any complaints about windows 8/8,1 or onedrive, I use it all the time but its a hassle having to open up a web browser to view shared files when windows 7 had access through file explorer. Its a nice app to backup documents but not to share files and collaborate
 
Does installing Onedrive through Windows Essentials work?
 
MrCrispy said:
There's no way to manually force a sync, stop sync or even view status. You can't even pause it.

When there's something wrong, the only indication is that stupid yellow triangle. No message box, nothing.

If there's a problem, the entire sync stops and will never resume. Any sane process would continue to try and sync other folders. Since there's no user notification, your local/online files can get hopelessly out of sync.

When you right click, 'view problems' on the yellow triangle, you are dumped into the Metro Skydrive app with no option to stop/restart sync, just a 'browse to item' for the file which failed to sync, which may or may not exist!

I had a few files which caused a sync problem due to path>255 limit, and there was no way to fix it. Skydrive went into an endless loop where it would rename the synced folder with a random number as it endlessly tried to resolve the conflict, so the path it complained about was never actually present. Since there's no UI to stop sync, the only way was to kill 'skydrive.exe'. Now I'll have to delete and recreate the entire folder and manually manage conflicts.

It boggles the mind how after having decades of experience writing file systems, releasing FolderSync, Live Mesh etc, MS could make a product so bad. Windows forums are filled with similar complaints with no response or resolution. I manage 25GB of heavily modified data in Dropbox and never had a single issue.
Click to expand...

Uh, it's Microsoft made isn't it? Why are you surprised or asking this?
 
I was really hoping for a solution/trick to at least pause the damn timing so I can copy my files and save them. Then restart the sync.
 
Just right click the icon and close the program, copy the files over, then load it back up. It scans all of the files to verify they are the same then syncs changes. I've restored the entire folder before and within a few moments everything is verified synced. Some stuff like zip files take a long time and will probably need to be re-downloaded.
 
MrCrispy said:
I was really hoping for a solution/trick to at least pause the damn timing so I can copy my files and save them. Then restart the sync.
Click to expand...

Did you try installing the Windows 7 version of Skydrive by downloading Microsoft Essentials 2012? You can get the download link through looking for Movie Maker for Windows 8.
 
I haven't tried installing the older Skydrive, because I'm not sure if it will cause conflicts and anyway it won't stop the current skydrive.exe from running. That process keeps renaming the root folder so its impossible to do anything. And you can't right click close, there's no option to pause to stop skydrive at all.
 
Why not just use one drive through file explorer? I've never had an issue with it, ever, and sync heavily on a daily basis. Even with huge files it's worked fine.
 
I've had issues with its process soaking up all my upstream bandwidth for days on end. Not transferring new files or anything, mind you — just basically spinning its wheels doing who knows what. Prior to that, it was responsible for taking down my system on more than a few occasions.

Generally speaking, it's been a pretty awful experience. I can't imagine using SkyDrive/OneDrive given how substantial an edge Microsoft's competitors have in this area in terms of reliability and feature robustness.
 
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